barrenness." Suppose but a solution of that continuity; the sequel is, darkness that may be felt.

There is a latter-day apologue of a gimlet that grew exceedingly discontented with its vocation, envying all the other tools in the carpenter's basket, and thinking scorn of its own mean duty of perpetually boring and picking holes everywhere. "The saw and the axe had grand work to do; and the plane got praise always; so did the chisel for its carving; and the happy hammer was always ringing merrily upon the clenching nail." But for it, a wretched, poking, paltry, gimlet, its work was hidden away, and very little seemed its recognised use. But the gimlet is assured, on the best authority, that nothing could compensate for its absence, and is therefore bidden be content, nay happy; for though its work seems mean and secret, it is indispensable. To its good offices, the workman is said to look chiefly for coherence without splitting; and to its quiet influences, the neatness, the solidity, the comfort of his structure may greatly be ascribed. The apologue has, of course, its practical application. "Are there not many pining gimlets in society, ambitious of the honour given to the greater-seeming tools of our Architect, but unconscious that in His hands they are quite as useful? The loving little child, the gentle woman, the patience of many a moral martyr, the diligence of many a duteous drudge, though their works may be unseen and their virtues operate in obscurity, yet are these main helpers to the very joints and bands of our body corporate, the quiet home influences whereby the great edifice, Society, is so nicely wainscoted and floored without splitboards."

To recognise one's being entrusted with but one talent, after all, and not with five or with ten, as one's vanity had previously taken for granted, has even been hailed as, in some sort, a soothing sensation. When one of us who has been led by native vanity or senseless flattery, says Dr. Holmes, to think himself or herself possessed of talent, arrives at the full and final conclusion that he or she is really dull, it is one of the most tranquillizing and blessed convictions that can enter

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a mortal's mind: "All our failures, our short-comings, our
strange disappointments in the effect of our efforts, are lifted
from our bruised shoulders, and fall, like Christian's pack, at
the feet of that Omnipotence which has seen fit to deny us the
pleasant gifts of high intelligence,-with which one look may
overflow us in some wider sphere of being." That the one
talent be employed, is the one thing needful. So feels the girl
in one of Charlotte Brontè's tales, whose exclamation is,
"Mother, the Lord who gave each of us our talents will come
home some day, and will demand from all an account.
tea-pot, the old stocking-foot, the linen rag, the willow-pattern
tureen, will yield up their barren deposit in many a house:
suffer your daughters, at least, to put their money to the
exchangers, that they may be enabled at the Master's coming
to pay His own with usury." A man is accepted according to
that he hath, not condemned in respect of what he never had.
Whatsoever his hand findeth to do, that is what a man is to do
with his might, to do with a will,-be it to govern a nation,
or to dust a warehouse. To apply a passage in Ben Jonson's
"Catiline,"

"They are no less part of the commonwealth
That do obey, than those that do command."

John Newton said that if two angels came down from heaven to execute a Divine command, and one was appointed to conduct an empire, and the other to sweep a street in it, they would feel no inclination to change employments. So again, the same robust divine affirmed that a Christian should never plead spirituality for being a sloven; "if he be but a shoecleaner, he should be the best in the parish." As the old servant tells Ruth, in Mrs. Gaskell's story, "There's a right and a wrong way of setting about everything—and to my thinking, the right way is to take a thing up heartily, if it is only making a bed. Why, dear ah me! making a bed may be done after a Christian fashion, I take it, or else what's to come of such as me in heaven, who 've had little enough time on earth for clapping ourselves down on our knees for set

prayers?" This quaint speaker had laid to heart the lesson. once for all enforced upon her, to do her duty in that state of life to which it had pleased God to call her; her station was that of a servant, and, looked at aright, as honourable as a king's she was to help and serve others in one way, just as a king is in another. Her parting counsel to Ruth runs thus: "Just try for a day to think of all the odd jobs as to be done well and truly in God's sight, not just slurred over any how, and you'll go through them twice as cheerfully," besides doing them more efficiently. John Brown, of Haddington, being waited on by a lad of excitable temperament, who informed him of his desire to become a preacher, and whom the shrewd pastor saw to be as weak in intellect as he was strong in conceit, advised him to continue in his present vocation. The young man said, "But I wish to preach and glorify God." The old commentator replied, "My young friend, a man may glorify God making broom besoms; stick to your trade, and glorify God by your life and conversation." As it was said of Bossuet, in the seventeeth century, that he could not walk, or sit down, or even pluck a currant, without your recognising in him the great bishop (so asserts a modern French divine, not of Bossuet's church), just so the workman and the domestic servant who are animated by their Master's spirit, distinguish themselves among their fellows by a certain air of nobility; under their blouse or their livery may be seen to shine the signal light of their aristocratie spirituelle, the image of the Most High Himself. However mean their employment, they go about it with neither disgust nor indifference; but with an intelligent interest, because, in the sight of God, and indeed in their own eyes, their occupation is on a level with that of king or emperor. What constitutes the difference between man and man, is not, urges M. Colani, the wielding a sceptre or plying a needle, but the being loyal to the trust, be it great or small, committed to us. This, he contends, is the only true point of view from which men and women should regard their occupations,-they should consider themselves as collaborateurs du Tout-Puissant. If their work seem the re

verse of noble, let them ennoble it by this thought, in Wordsworth's phrase,

"And with the lofty sanctify the low."

A Christian nursemaid is pictured, forgetting the thousand désagréments of her humble functions, and reminding herself that in reality she is in charge of souls, as much as pastor or preacher is, and this grande conviction suffices to save her from servile dejection. So, again, the artisan and day labourer may be sustained by the Spirit from on high, and taught to magnify their calling, in a deep and a wide sense, because it is what they are called to, and because they respond to the call, in the spirit of it. They are toilers co-operant to an end; and the end, the result, is with God. "They also serve who only stand and wait." But the whole sonnet of Milton's which closes with that grand line, is too germane to the matter, and too largely suggestive in its main issue, to be omitted here; the sonnet which the blind poet wrote touching his blindness :—

"When I consider how my light is spent,

Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide,
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest He, returning, chide;
'Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?'
I fondly ask: but Patience, to prevent

That murmur, soon replies, "God doth not need
Either man's work, or His own gifts; who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve Him best; His state
Is kingly; thousands at His bidding speed,
And post o'er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait."

SUBORDINATE, NOT SUPERFLUOUS; OR,
DEPRECIATED MEMBERSHIP.

I CORINTHIANS xii. 22.

TRENUOUSLY St. Paul insists on the importance of

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not overlooking the feebler members of the body-be it physical, politic, or ecclesiastical,—and of upholding their rights to due consideration, on the mere score of membership. Subordinate they may be, but superfluous they are not. The body would not be a body without them. "Nay, much more, those members of the body, which seem to be more feeble, are necessary." "Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular." If all were one member, where were the body? But now are they many members, but one body. And one member differeth from another in honour; yet, without the seeming minor and meaner ones, for all the abundant honour of the greater ones, where were the body?

Human society, it has been said, is a vast and intricate machine, composed of innumerable wheels and pulleys :-every one has his special handle to grind at; some with great and obvious effects, others with little or no assignable result; but if the object ultimately produced by the combined efforts of all is in itself a good one, it is not to be denied that whatever is essential to its production is good also. Human society is thus regarded as a body corporate, made up of different members, each of which has its own special function: one class tilling the ground, another combining and distributing its produce, a third making, and a fourth executing laws, and so on, through every class of society. "If all these functions are properly discharged, the whole body corporate is in a healthy condition; and thence it follows that whoever contributes to the full and proper discharge of any one of these functions, is contributing to the general good of the whole body; so that a person occupied in them is doing good in the strictest sense of the words." An able discourser on social subjects, arguing against a current crotchet, utterly denies that a girl in a respectable family does not earn the honourable title of a

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